Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch [Paperback]

Eric Kraft (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 4, 2003

Ella Leroy dreams of escaping the dreary routine of her 1950s wife-and-mom life. Without telling her husband, she enlists her son Peter and his locally notorious girlfriend Patti in a scheme: to buy a run-down clamboat and reinvent it as an elegant cruising vessel for summer people in the beach town of Babbington, Long Island. But after Arcinella is purchased, Peter discovers that it is slowly sinking—and so each night he sneaks from his home to the harborfront, where he pumps the boat dry and so inflates his mother’s hopes a bit longer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kraft's eighth installment (after Leaving Small's Hotel) in the winsome series featuring the charming Peter Leroy is a cheeky, amusing look at the nature of the entrepreneurial dream. Narrated by the now adult Peter, the story takes place during his adolescence, as his mother, Ella, gets yet another idea in an endless string of outlandish business schemes. This time her fantasy is to establish a cruise line for the bay near their hometown of Babbington, Del. Despite her husband's smirking disapproval, she buys a clam boat and, with the help of Peter and his sexy girlfriend, Patti, begins to fix it up. The cruise line makes a splash in the community when Peter hits a channel marker during their elegant maiden voyage, dumping the mayor's wife in the bay. Their venture struggles after their first outing, until they get the idea to go downscale and paint the boat in garish tropical colors, a move that makes them a wild local hit. The rags-to-riches plot is a bit on the generic side, but Kraft turns the concept up a notch in the preface, in which Peter Leroy reveals that the happy ending is one he created to compensate for his mother's endless real life failures, a gambit that allows room for plenty of tongue-in-cheek games with the reality-versus-fantasy theme. The book has some slow moments during the rather ordinary coming-of-age narrative in the early going, but once Kraft begins to work his clever conceit, this novel emerges as another memorable installment in his innovative series. East Coast author tour.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* It's always a welcome occasion when a new novel is added to Kraft's ever-growing oeuvre, collectively called The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. His latest--the eighth installment--is no exception. Reading the Peter Leroy saga is akin to watching a champion juggler deftly keep dozens of balls in the air while executing an intricate double-time tap dance routine--all without breathing hard. In these books, which all take place in Babbington, a small town on the southern end of Long Island during the middle years of the twentieth century, Kraft explores the lives of the extended Leroy family and friends. The series is not written in chronological order, and although each novel can stand alone, reading them together certainly enhances the pleasure one takes from these comic masterpieces that are also testaments to the exhilarating power of memory. Inflating a Dog tells two stories: the attempt by Peter's mother, Ella, to start a business, and 13-year-old Peter's discovery of serious sexual longing, whose object is Patti (age14). Sentimental, loving, raucous, wise, and great fun, this is simply not to be missed. Nancy Pearl
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Picador (July 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312422210
• ISBN-13: 978-0312422219
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,037,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He studied English at Harvard, where he invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they now have two sons.

After earning a Master's Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. After a series of positions in editing and publishing, Kraft and his wife founded Kraft & Kraft, an editorial-services company for educational publishers. Throughout the years, he wrote daily, trying to discover the stories that Peter Leroy had to tell.

Eric Kraft is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England. He is also a recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

Learn more at www.erickraft.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I agree! why aren't these bestsellers?, May 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch (Hardcover)

Dear Mr. Kraft-- you have a great editor but either a) a terrible publicist or b) a devotion to anonymity, or c) I can't figure out c-- do I have to?.

Mr. Kraft, I don't mean to connect your works with the Harry Potter series. But, really, I don't understand why adults are not lining up at chainstores at midnight when your latest book is released. I can only believe that your modesty or shyness prevents this.

So, via a review that you will probably never read, I want to say:
Your books have changed my life, and the life of the twenty or more people who have shared my copies of your novels. My grandmother, aunts, uncles, family friends, and new-found friends have all been enriched by the adventures of Peter Leroy, his family, and other relations.

A personal thank you.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and heartbreaking, August 6, 2002

By 

Doug Baldwin (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch (Hardcover)

This novel continues/amplies/revises (your pick) the stories that began in "Little Follies" and continued in "Where Do You Stop," "At Home With The Glynns" and "Leaving Small's Hotel." As with all of its predecessors, "Inflating a Dog" blends wordplay and nostalgia with some serious observations on memory and coming to terms with the past. Wonderfully written and hilariously funny in the deadpan manner of Charles Portis ("True Grit," "Dog of the South"), "Inflating a Dog" is one of the very best books I've read this year.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why aren't these bestsellers?!, August 1, 2002

By 

Kevin Lauderdale (Annandale, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch (Hardcover)

Kraft's Peter Leroy books are a little sweet, a little sexy, and always funny. "Infalting" is no exception. We get Peter's exploration of his possible illegitimacy through role-playing with the sexy Patti, we get his adventures in his mother's plan for meals on the waves, and we get the usual conceit of memoir that isn't memoir. Best of all, Kraft does what so few writers are capable of doing: he entertains and he keeps your interest. You never check your watch while reading an Eric Kraft book.